58 Large and Small Holdings 



towns, rose rapidly after the introduction of free trade 1 . On the land, 

 according to Caird, they rose from 9^. yd. in 1850 to 14^. in i878 2 . 

 The price of bread remaining the same, or even falling somewhat 3 , 

 the purchasing-power of wages in regard of all other provisions must 

 have risen greatly so soon as the money-wage went up. The people 

 could once again enjoy the animal food which they had so long been 

 compelled to renounce. Hitherto bread and potatoes had been their 

 staple diet: now they could add some amount of meat, butter and 

 cheese. In 1851, five years after the abolition of the corn-laws, Caird 

 reported 4 that though bread was still the chief food of the great mass 

 of the population, the consumption of meat and cheese was increasing 

 enormously in the manufacturing districts, where wages were high. 

 Even in the agricultural districts, he said, the labourers were beginning 

 to eat meat occasionally, or to add a little cheese to their bread. It 

 would seem that the increased demand for animal food in the first thirty 

 years of free trade was mainly for fresh meat and perhaps for cheese. 

 Butter, milk, eggs and poultry were less in demand. At any rate the 

 increased consumption of fresh meat is the point always specially 

 emphasized by the writers of the period 5 . Accordingly the price of 

 that commodity rose considerably 6 ; and under the comparatively 

 undeveloped transport conditions foreign competition hardly entered 

 into this sphere 7 . 



The rising price of meat made the hitherto neglected art of 

 pasture-farming profitable, and farmers quickly took it up. Un- 

 fortunately there are no reliable agricultural statistics of earlier date 

 than 1867. But the series of figures beginning in that year shows that 

 between 1 867 and 1 874 the cattle and sheep kept had increased by about 

 a million heads, the area under green crops by about 100,000 acres, 

 that under clover, sainfoin and "grasses under rotation" by 300,000 



1 A. L. Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom, 1900, p. 130; Memoranda, Statistical 

 Tables and Charts prepared by the Board of Trade, 1903, pp. 264-9; Noble, op. cit. 

 pp. 161-9. 



2 Caird, landed Interest, p. 157. 



3 Cp. the prices of bread as given in the official Report on Wholesale and Retail Prices, 

 1903, pp. 221, 224 and 225. 



4 Caird, English Agriculture, p. 484. 



5 Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, July 1857 March 1859, pp. 554 f. : " Butcher-meat 

 is now much more extensively used among all classes, arising from the prosperous condition of 

 the labourers, who, having good wages, cheap bread, and also cheap beef, immediately after 

 the repeal of the Corn Laws, were enabled to indulge daily in a little flesh." See also Caird, 

 Landed Interest, p. 30 : " The leap which the consumption of meat took in consequence of 

 the general rise of wages in all branches of trade and employment." 



6 Levy, Die Not etc., p. 131. 7 Caird, Landed Interest, p. 30. 



